[LINK] "If Tim Hudak can’t win against the unions, he can’t win at all"

[rfmcdonald]

Yesterday's by-elections in Ontario ended with the spectacle of the Liberals failing to gain a razor-thin majority, the party keeping the riding of Vaughan but seeing the NDP take Kitchener-Waterloo. Most analysts suggest that the NDP victory in the second riding was at least more likely than a Liberal victory, given the relative unpopularity of the Liberals in the riding. Matt Gurney, writing in the right-leaning National Post, suggests that the loss in Kitchener-Waterloo says much worse things about the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and their leader, Tim Hudak. Another John Tory?

The day after two Ontario byelections failed to substantially alter the balance of power at Queen’s Park, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty and Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak could both be excused for feeling a bit down. McGuinty because his gambit to get a majority by luring away a veteran Tory from a seat the Liberals thought they could win proved a bust. And Hudak because that long-time Tory seat went orange instead of staying blue.

But it is Hudak who must truly be worried. The trends don’t look good.

McGuinty didn’t have much to say on Friday. But Hudak proved a trooper and got himself before the press first thing in the morning. During that conference, he laid some of the blame for his party’s defeat in both byelections on “union muscle.” That wasn’t the case in Vaughan, a Liberal fortress that predictably went red with almost no change in voter preference since 2011. But in Waterloo, he may have been onto something.

“The (NDP) won the seat, they got a new member, but this is dangerous for our province and it’s an ominous development if the Liberals move back into bed with the public sector union bosses,” Hudak told reporters, adding, “There is a lot of strength in public service unions — we’ve got to take this seriously and I think it’s dangerous and ominous for the province to see that power on display.”

He’s not wrong. But he’s not entirely right, either. Yes, public-sector unions are powerful in Ontario — arguably too powerful. And those unions are currently rather peeved with the McGuinty Liberals. But in Waterloo, the vote shift showed more than just a migration of votes from the red to the orange column. The Tories dropped 12% from the 2011 election. The ex-Tory MPP for the riding, Elizabeth Witmer, was known to be personally popular. But it can’t be comforting that she was that much more popular than the Hudak-led PCs.

More to the point, while Hudak may be entirely right that union muscle helped the NDP get a volunteer army out onto the streets of Kitchener-Waterloo, explaining away the defeats on that basis simply doesn’t cut it. Let’s take Hudak at his word and agree that union muscle provided decisive. Well, fine. OK. What’s he going to do about it?

Because he’s right. Ontario’s unions are powerful. But they aren’t magically concentrated just in Kitchener-Waterloo. The larger, more powerful unions — teachers come to mind — are scattered across every riding in the province, and have deep pockets. If Hudak can’t solve the union problem, he can’t win government. It’s that simple.